Monthly archives for May, 2015

At Ignite 2015 Microsoft announced Microsoft Azure Stack. Microsoft brings with this version literally the Public Azure to your own Datacenter. Azure stack will contain the same bits as they run in Azure. So that’s looking really promising as I can’t even imagine how many services they offer in Azure. The big keyword here is consistency. When you as a tenant creating a new deployment they will allow you to take that deployment and run it in Azure, the Service Provider running Azure Stack and your own data center if you are running Azure Stack. And that’s a big change versus the last 2 editions of Azure Pack. But as Daniel Neumann mentioned on his blog, it is not an updated version of Azure pack, but an entirely new product. In this blog post I am going to highlight the new features that makes all this consistency possible. You see in the image below that Azure Stack and Azure consist of the same building blocks, starting with the Cloud Infrastructure or as we also know it as the fabric. On top of that they provide the Azure portal and on top of that we deploy our services no matter if it is running Windows or Linux.

“Microsoft is the only cloud vendor that builds and runs its own hyper-scale datacenters and delivers that technology back to customers. We are infusing our experience into our hybrid cloud technology through battle-hardened cloud infrastructure and integration of Azure design points for greater consistency between Azure and customers’ datacenters. We are bringing the next wave of this innovation to our customers with Microsoft Azure Stack.

Built on the same core technology as Azure, Microsoft Azure Stack designed to bring Azure to your datacenter for the deployment of enterprise and modern applications at any scale. Azure Stack enables IT professionals to transition from traditional IT control methods to providing users and developers access the tools they need when they need them, while still maintaining central control.

Empowering users and developers with a consistent, self-service cloud experience: Azure Stack brings the ease of cloud application deployment to the on-premises datacenter, supporting the same experience as Azure with Azure Resource Manager (ARM) templates (made available in preview last week at BUILD). ARM templates provide a gateway through the Azure portal for seamless service delivery across Azure and datacenters, reducing friction in the hybrid environment. Users can deploy workloads to Azure or on-premises based on business requirements, focusing on the application itself rather than the infrastructure. Azure Stack enables access to many of the same Azure IaaS and PaaS services on-premises, with the same intuitive self-service experience they would have with Azure. Azure Stack also empowers developers to innovate faster and on their terms by providing access to the broadest set of development tools and platforms.

Speeding time to value with simplified deployment: The deployment and configuration of private and hybrid clouds can be daunting and resource-intensive. Azure Stack will offer a simplified deployment and configuration experience.

It is a great time for big Microsoft events. We’ve just closed the door on Build 2015 in Los Angeles. Today the colossal new event Microsoft Ignite is about to open its doors and soon we’ll have the local Microsoft TechDays. We are seeing fantastic developments around Azure, Windows Server, Windows 10, Open Windows Platform, Continuum and Hololens. We may even get a glimpse of the new Azure Pack.

The SCUG NL & Hyper-V.nu user groups offer you to follow these developments closer to home. Just before Techdays 2015, we organize our second Theme Night called:

“Azure to the rescue: Hybrid Identity & Business Continuity”

In this second edition of Theme Night, Simon May and Sergio Pattinama will talk about Hybrid Identity, Windows 10 and Business Continuity/Disaster Recovery based on Azure Site Recovery (ASR). Simon will dive into the world of Hybrid Identity. How to you connect your on-premises Active Directory and Azure Active Directory and why this is an important part of Microsoft Online Cloud Services such as Azure, Office 365 and Microsoft Intune. Next Sergio Pattinama will show how to set up Azure Site Recovery to make DR scenarios easily accessible for customers with Hyper-V, VMware and even physical servers. Replication to your own second datacenter, a hosting provider datacenter or the Azure datacenter are possible targets for ASR. In the third and final presentation, Simon May will talk about enterprise mobility with Windows 10.

During these events we keep you up-to-date with topics regarding Azure, Hyper-V & System Center! Developments in IT-land go so fast that it is very hard to only touch the surface of these subjects. We choose a Theme Night to go deeper on the individual topics and hope to give you a deep understanding of a particular topic. We try to get (international) renowned speakers, often MVP in the field.

Free ticket to Techdays 2015

During this “Theme Night” we’ll raffle a free ticket to TechDays 2015! The Dutch event will be on May 28-29, a top-event with 150 sessions you really shouldn’t miss.

Of course we close with a food and drinks.

Please be quick to register as from experience we know we normally sell out quite rapidly!

We aim to maintain a low threshold with these events, so there is no fee. Still we try to keep the number of no-shows as low as possible. You can help by registering only if you’ll definitely turn up. If something else comes up, please cancel your registration so it becomes available to others again.
Without sponsors this event would not be possible. We thank inovativ for making this event possible!

I was at the Azure Global Bootcamp last month where we built a number of Azure VMs and networks. We also configured load balancing and several other settings. When I came home, I thought that it would be much easier if we could manage endpoints, load balancers and network security groups via a GUI. So the end result is available on the TechNet Gallery. Please look at it and if you have any feedback please let me know.

When you start the tool, it discovers an already connected Azure subscription. If not, you can add one by using Add Azure Account.

You can then browse through your Cloud Services and VMs inside of the Cloud Services.

There is an overview of the VM you selected where you can quickly connect, stop, start or delete your VM. Be careful with the delete. The confirm doesn’t seem to work somehow, so it’s not included in the script. Only the last VM in the service will give a warning.

In his presentation at Build 2015 on Windows and Hyper-V Containers, Taylor Brown almost casually mentioned that in the next version of Windows Server, it will be possible to enable Hyper-V in a Hyper-V VM. The news was broken by fellow Hyper-V MVP Ronald Beekelaar who attended this great session in San Francisco.

Very quickly dozens of emails appeared in my mailbox from very enthusiastic fellow MVPs who have been begging for this feature for several years now. In fact I have also pleaded for nested hypervisor as we often have to build labs and prepare demos which include Windows Azure Pack. Some of its features can do without a Hyper-V server or cluster such as websites, databases, service management automation, but if VMM and infrastructure as a service is involved, we badly miss a Hyper-V host to deploy VM Roles. Of course we could add physical host to the lab, but with so many consultants in our CloudOS team, there just isn’t enough hardware.

Now that Microsoft has acknowledged that nested Hyper-V will be possible in a future build of vNext, it will be much easier for us to start learning the new Azure Pack and the many new features of Virtual Machines v2, equivalent to public Azure that is on the roadmap.

The real reason why Microsoft introduces running Hyper-V within Hyper-V is the anticipated new service to run Hyper-V Containers in Azure. Just like hypervisors abstract the operating system from the hardware, containers abstract the application from the operating system. There are two types of containers: Windows Server Containers and Hyper-V Containers. The former runs on the bare metal and the latter requires the Hyper-V hypervisor so that Containers can run in Hyper-V VMs. It stands to reason that Hyper-V Containers are much more suitable for Azure than giving customers access to the physical host, which would simply be impossible.

So expect to be running Hyper-V containers in an Azure VM (probably of the Nano Server type), running on the Azure fabric and once this is possible, you will also be able to run other guests inside an Azure VM. Because the same version of CloudOS will be available to public Azure, hosted Azure as well as private Azure, you can benefit from this new technology wherever it suits you best.

I can hardly wait for this new technology to become generally available!